According to Reuters, a consortium of tech companies, including Apple, BlackBerry maker RIM, Microsoft, EMC, Sony, and Ericsson have won the auction to acquire Nortel's mammoth $4.5 billion dollar mobile patent portfolio. How much of that will come from Apple is currently unknown, though RIM is on the line for $770 million and Ericsson, $340 million. The companies are expected to pool the patents and use them both to protect against patent lawsuits and, of course, launch lawsuits of their own.

When Apple next announces their financial results, they should have close to $70 billion in the bank, which according to Asymco will be enough to buy all their manufacturing competitors with the exception of Samsung. That includes HTC, Nokia, RIM, LG, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson. (Google and Microsoft aren't manufacturers, they're platform vendors.)

Four U.S. Senators, including Sen. Charles Schumer, sent letters to Apple, Google and Research in Motion in March requesting that the companies remove apps notifying users of police sobriety checkpoints their respective application stores. Schumer raised the issue again at Tuesday's Senate subcommittee hearing on privacy.

Research in Motion has announced BlackBerry Enterprise Server support for iOS -- namely BES and RIM's newly acquired ubitexx technology, will soon be able to provide management and security features for iPhone and iPad.

“The multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution is designed to address a growing market and respond to requests from enterprise customers who want a secure multi-platform device management solution from a company that already delivers the gold standard for enterprise mobility,” said Peter Devenyi, Vice President, Communications Platform Group at Research In Motion. “We recognize the opportunity to continue leading in the enterprise market by providing customers with a common platform to help simplify the management of a variety of mobile devices.”

iOS -- and Android for that matter -- won't get all the fancy features BlackBerrys on BES enjoy (most of those are OS level services) but they'll get enough to make it very interesting for IT departments.

Microsoft once faced the choice of keeping ActiveSync a competitive advantage for Windows Mobile, hurting their platform but helping their devices, or licensing ActiveSync and gaining infrastructure share at the expense of device share. They chose the latter and now ActiveSync is a key part of iOS, Mac OS X, GoogleSync, and many Android devices. RIM had chosen to keep their technology for themselves... up until now and it begs the question -- if they're going to let BES go cross-platform, could BBM follow?

And what if any increased competition will Apple's new "iCloud" services offer in the enterprise space?

Full BlackBerry World PR after the break! Anyone counting the days until you can hook your iPhone or iPad into BES?

This year is turning out to be a big one for Apple. They recently passed Microsoft in net income earnings at $5.99 billion compared to $5.23 billion from Microsoft -- mainly due to iOS devices like the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 driving sales and raising profit margins. The iPhone, iPad and iPod touch currently represent roughly 65% of overall sales for Apple, with the Verizon iPhone helping push demand even further as Android growth seems to be at a plateau.

TiPb breaks down the must have apps we want to see from Apple, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and RIM/BlackBerry for iPhone and iPad

Despite hundreds of thousands of iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps in the App Store, there are still some huge gaps, and major apps missing from the big players, including Apple themselves, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and BlackBerry maker RIM. Some of the best known software on the market simply isn't available for iOS. We're hoping that changes in 2011, and after the break are the apps we're hoping help make the change!

Over the weekend a former RIM employee stated that when Apple unveiled the first iphone at Macworld 2007, RIM had several emergency meetings which culminated with the BlackBerry maker deciding Apple was lying -- the iPhone wasn't possible.

RIM's opinion was that a phone with all of the 2007 iPhone's functionality and large touchscreen could not be used without being near a power supply at all times. Shacknews poster, Kentor, heard from his former colleagues: